Zero Option

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) today gave a speech to the National Policy Conference of The Nixon Center and the Richard Nixon Foundation. In it, he questioned the Obama administration's stated goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons:

First, is 'zero' really desirable? If nuclear deterrence has kept the peace between superpowers since the end of World War II, which itself cost over 60 million lives by some estimates, are nuclear weapons really a risk to peace or a contributor to peace?

Second, since the know-how exists to build nuclear weapons and they can't be disinvented, is it really realistic to think they could be effectively eliminated? For example, if we get near to zero, any nation that can breakout and build even a few nuclear weapons will become a superpower.

And the superpowers themselves will find it difficult to get close to zero. For example, if Russia deploys ten extra nuclear weapons today, that's not a big deal, we have 2,200 deployed. If, however, each side is at 100 weapons, and one side deploys an extra ten, that's a significant military breakout. And while we will have 1,550 deployed weapons under the new treaty, and China will still have only several hundred, as we go lower, China has every incentive to build up quickly and become a peer competitor to the U.S. How do we deal with these problems? It's not clear we know.

Third, do we really have to 'restore our moral leadership' and is it necessarily more moral or moral at all to eschew weapons that have been a deterrent to conflict, but the elimination of which could make the world again safe for conventional wars between the great powers? Again, World War 2 cost an estimated 60 million lives. After 1945, the great powers have been deterred from war with each other.